At the Edge of Light
by KH Rockin' Robins collabs
Summary: The city of Hollow Bastion. A perfect lie where the citizens hide their fear behind smiles...because they know that the Organization is always watching. The Resistance must be careful. Still, one of their own has just been lost.
1. Chapter 1

**Standard Disclaimer: **please see the profile page :)

**Note: **Everything posted on this account (this story included) will be written collaboratively by several different writers. For more information, please view our profile page. Thanks and enjoy!

**Summary: **The city of Hollow Bastion, a veritable utopia where the residents are always smiling and at peace with their lives…because they had no other choice. The Organization saw to that.

**Writer:** finem

**At the Edge of Life**

Part 1

_Smile…keep smiling… nod, wave, smile. That's it…There's nothing wrong…nothing at all…_

Sora made his way through the throngs of late afternoon pedestrian traffic. It was 5:00. Work was done and they had exactly one hour to clear the streets and get home for Dinnertime. As always, there was an air of carefully concealed tension and haste in the people of Radiant Garden. Smiles and greetings were freely exchanged, but no one stopped to chat for a bit. No one laughed or pulled friends to the side. Everyone pretended that everything was fine, but they knew that they had to get home. 

It was very bad to be caught outside during Dinnertime.

"Hey, Sora!"

The brunet looked up and returned the smile and wave from one of his 'friends' where he strolled happily along with his flip-haired girlfriend. Tidus and Selphie. That was one he still had to get used to. A month ago, Tidus really had been one of his closest friends, and he had been in a happy relationship with a completely different girl.

Sora looked around and spotted Yuna not far away, heading for the flat that she and Tidus used to share, a vacant smile forced firmly on her lips as she pointedly ignored the couple. That was over now. Tidus had never been one to stand by complacently and accept the enforced conformity of their city. He had bad-mouthed the Organization one too many times, and now the Organization had made sure that he would never have anything bad to say about it again.

_smile…smile…_

It wasn't an easy life, living in Radiant Garden. Dreams didn't exist here, only cold gray reality. There had been a time when Sora thought that maybe he could get out. Maybe he would be able to travel to another place, actually go to a University, but that hope had died long ago. His brother had tried to get them both out of the city, but the Organization had taken him, and Sora had never seen Roxas again.

Perhaps Sora would have disappeared along with his brother the night he'd been taken. The brunet had been ready to storm the Organization's base of operations and demand that his brother be returned to him. He knew that it would have been futile, but life without Roxas had lost all meaning, and even if it meant undergoing the Organization's reeducation, Sora thought it would be worth it if he could be reunited with the only family he had. He would have gone, but before he could leave, his computer had turned on.

The message on the screen looked like spam. A random email, bulk-sent to his account, but the text in bold across the top caught his attention and drew him to sit before his monitor.

"Those who are lost are not lost forever. Your Brothers and Sisters can be saved."

Further inspection showed the email to be from some kind of religious group called Kingdom Hearts Ministries. To this day, Sora wasn't sure what possessed him to reply to the message, but he had.

"I want to save my brother." That was the text he'd sent. Almost instantly, he received a reply sending him a time and address where 'services would be held.'

That was the first time he had learned of the Resistance. He'd gone to the address given, a small church in the older part of town, and been greeted by a silver-haired teen, just barely older than he. The boy looked like an avenging angel, the fire and intensity burning in his Aquarian eyes almost frightening. It was the strongest emotion Sora had ever seen in the eyes of anyone aside from Roxas. Standing beside the boy ways a redhead girl, amethyst eyes wet with tears and wide with confusion. Later he learned that the girl was like him. She had lost her sister, Naminé, to the Organization, and she, too, had responded to the strange message that appeared in her inbox.

Riku and Kairi. They had changed his life; given him purpose when it seemed like all was lost.

That had been two years ago. Sora was nineteen now and he had been living with the other two since that day. A strong kinship had formed between them that, in Riku's case, had eventually grown into something more. Sora had actually found a kind of happiness with them, and together, they worked silently, along with untold others in the city, to sneak people out when they were at risk of reeducation, help the reeducated regain the memories they had lost, and slowly dismantle the Organization's power in whatever way they could.

Riku was an organizer of some kind to whoever was coordinating the group's combined efforts, but even he didn't to know from whom they were taking orders. Everything was secrecy and subtlety. They generally worked in teams of three and never gathered more than two teams together at once. They never spoke of the Resistance in public. All of their communications were done through codes hidden in emails that would change daily. They all took special pains to ensure that the Organization would not be able to track them. Still, the Organization was aware of their existence, and it had begun actively seeking to weed out the Residence, bit by bit.

"Sora!" Kairi called, rushing to greet him at the door of the small house the three of them shared. "Anything?"

The question in her eyes and anxiety radiating from her every move told Sora that her search had been no more fruitful than his. He shook his head, slumping against the door as he allowed his outside persona to slip away. He fought to keep panic at bay.

"I haven't heard anything or seen him anywhere," he told her in a carefully controlled voice. "I even risked asking Hayner and his group if they'd seen anything." Sora swallowed around the lump that was constricting his throat, making it difficult to breathe. He didn't want to believe it had happened again, that the closest person to his heart was once again taken away, but…

"I think they caught him, Kai. I think the Organization has Riku."


	2. Chapter 2

**Writer:** beckychan

**At the Edge of Light**

Part 2

It was the sound of dripping water that eventually woke Riku. Well that, and the need to pee, which could also be attributed to the sound of dripping water. The silver-haired youth rose and immediately regretted it. He was sore all over, and cold. This was probably due to the fact that he had been sleeping on featureless concrete, which was both hard and had a tendency to suck the heat out of living things. If you could call what he'd been doing 'sleeping' and not 'recovering from unconsciousness.'

Also, it was dark. There must have been some source of light somewhere, because Riku could make out different shades of dark, but he couldn't really see anyone or anything. When he waved a hand in front of his face he thought he could see the blur of motion, but he knew he could also be fooling himself.

Riku reached out slowly, tentatively. He wanted to find a wall, explore the dimensions of his cell, but he didn't want to jam his hand by finding the wall too fast. His fingertips brushed more cold, featureless concrete, and he began his explorations.

The cell turned out to be about five paces deep and about twice as long. Not a very big room. There was nothing on the floor, or, at least, he hadn't tripped on anything (or anyone) during his search, so he concluded that there was nothing to find. He didn't anticipate the Organization giving him access to a bathroom anytime soon, so with a supreme amount of distaste, he relieved himself in the corner opposite to the one he'd woken up in, keeping it as far from what he couldn't help but think of as his bed as possible.

So, he was here for reeducation, was he? Well perhaps he'd find some kind of use for being on the inside, even if it was in a dark, featureless cell. Sora and Kairi... they'd get on without him. They were both strong, terribly strong, even if they couldn't always see it, and they found as much strength in each other as they would ever find in themselves. They would carry on.

Still, he couldn't help but wonder what was to become of him, whether he could fake reeducation and be re-released into the outside world, unchanged. He wondered how many before him had had those same thoughts. He wondered if Sora's brother and Kairi's sister were still here, and whether or not he could save them still. And if they weren't here, he wondered if he could find out where they'd been released to. He doubted Organization XIII was stupid enough to place the reeducated back into the same neighborhood they'd left. The chance of running into their old lives and remembering was too great.

The sound of heavy footsteps woke him from his reverie. He sat up as straight as he could. "Who's there?" he called into the darkness. Nothing but the footsteps answered him. A key in a lock, a heavy bolt being slid back, the creaking of unoiled hinges. "What is this, some kind of tower dungeon?" he joked to his unseen jailer, but still, no voice answered him.

Instead, a thick bag was thrown over his head (how could his captor see where his head was?) and cinched off around his neck, loose enough to breathe, but tight enough to get across the point that struggling would only make it tighter.

For a moment, Riku considered struggling. So let them strangle him. It would be better than reeducation. But then in his mind, a flash of blue as rich and bright and deep as the sky on a summer day, and he had the desire not to die, if only to see the eyes that shade of blue in person once again.

He was manhandled to his feet, then led roughly down the hall by a hand that was huge and capable. It wasn't kind, though. He'd stumble, and it would let him fall, then yank him to his feet and shove him on his way. Riku didn't know how long this went on before he was dragged to a halt.

"Cell 9567, prisoner 67-AY302," a deep voice rumbled from behind him.

Riku heard the sound of a pen scratching on paper, then a brief moment of typing. "Hand here," said a sarcastic-sounding alto, "look at the retinal scanner," a brief whirring, "state your name."

"Cobra Bubbles," said the voice from before, slowly and with good diction.

There was a loud buzz and the sound of bolts being thrown, then another door opening and Riku was man-handled into what he could only assume was another room.

His assumptions were proven correct when the sack on his head was roughly pulled off (painfully taking some of his hairs with it), and his aquamarine eyes were introduced to the first real light they'd seen since he'd woken. It was too bright and it made his eyes water, even as he squinted desperately to ward it away.

"Now," said Cobra Bubbles, a huge, dark man in a dark suit and dark glasses, "we have some questions for you."


	3. Chapter 3

**Writer: **mummifiedmutant

Kairi looked frantic, hands clutching at the doorframe between them

Kairi looked frantic, hands clutching at the doorframe between them. If he didn't know any better, he'd say the wood was almost - almost - about ready to crack.

"The Organization has Riku." She stated the words like a fact, a fact so true it could never be paralleled by any evidence that could possibly come to counter it. Her eyes were faintly bloodshot, now, as she stated it again; and the second time, they came out strangled, pained-- oh so horribly detached. "The Organization has Riku..."

Sora stared for a long while, throat constricted (damn, he had been the first one to say it and it still hadn't quite sunk in), and any words failing to come. Taking a deep breath - lips quirked ever-so-slightly in a weak smile - Sora leaned forward and, before she crumbled completely, caught her in a tight hug: like true best friends do, while he tried his best just to comfort her, and not to think too deeply on how much he wanted Riku back. The way he thought, the way those first few precious seconds of them reunited played out in his head, just seemed so selfish and... completely different to what any of them would have imagined... but then, maybe they all had expected it instead...

There was the warmth of arms around his waist suddenly, cutting him away from his thoughts, and Sora realized that Kairi was hugging him back. She held on to him as much strength as she could muster, doing her best to bring a sort of... solace to the situation... and both of them felt just that little bit better.

"How--" she paused - taking a deep breath, shuddering into Sora's shoulders as she did - and started again: "What should we do now?"

The answer came so quickly to him. And, despite how distasteful and distressing the task was as he mulled over if once again, he didn't falter with his words. (This was about keeping hope, about taking action, about taking a stand. For Kairi. For Riku. For himself.) "We need to rescue him, Kairi!"

Her breathing had calmed against his shoulder, almost completely to a halt. She pulled away slightly, shifting so that she could stare him in the eyes-- blue on blue. "We need a plan first, Sora." Kairi thought her words out carefully, "I don't want to see Riku go through re-education either - you know I don't - but we can't just dive right in, okay?" He noticed how puffy her eyes were, now, and how she was smiling despite the fact (not fake like how they did in the city, but genuine and oh-so-true). "That won't help us save Riku..."

The way her lips parted and closed again, it looked as if she wanted to say something else on the subject. Whatever she might have been thinking, she had apparently ditched the idea, instead moving in favour of tapping lightly at the base of his chin with her little pinky finger - taking one arm away from around Sora's waist in the process. It was a habit of hers, to look like that while she was thinking, but Sora didn't think anything bad of it-- only that it was one of those very small quirks that made her... her.

Taking a step back, fully bringing herself out of the comforting hug they had been sharing, Kairi wiped the thin tear streaks away from under her eyes. It didn't do much to stop the faint redness overtaking her normal skin tone, nor from completely ridding herself of her wet stained cheeks. Still... she looked a lot happier, and that was enough.

"Maybe we should go talk to Donald and Goofy," she suggested slowly, before starting to giggle into her hand when Sora's eyes brightened considerably.

He'd found a long lasting and strong friendship with the duck and the dog; maybe not to the same extent as with Riku and Kairi, but it was definitely a strong one. While they always said they ran on happy faces, it was no where near to the extent that the Organization tried to enforce it. They were more about cheering you up, not making you act like how you don't feel. And they often talked fondly of their "King" as well, but Sora hadn't honestly ever met him. But if he was important to Donald and Goofy, then he would love to meet him one day.

He grinned to match his eyes, of how they had looked at the mention of his other comrades. Because he knew, if anyone could help them in their time of need, it would be those too. And Riku... silver hair and an aquamarine-tinted soul cascading into his mind's eye; it was like they had just taken one significant step towards finding him... bringing him home...

Sora was getting excited. He could practically feel the butterflies rising in his stomach. "Well what are we waiting for, Kairi? Let's go!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Writer: Hoshiyuki**

The proceedings were going on as usual. The subject was holding out better then some, but everyone cracked. A soft whimper could be heard through the thick walls surrounding the reeducation room.

The pair of dark cloaked figures stood behind the darkened glass and watched Bubbles deal with the newest inmate. The proceedings weren't cruel, but destroying memories was something that wasn't easy to watch.

"That's enough," one of the dark-cloaked figures said in a hushed whisper.

"Just a little longer and we'll be done for today," the answer was just as soft, green eyes glancing at the smaller figure leaning against the glass. "You should go back, it's not your turn to watch."

"I want to be here," the figure replied and crossed his arms against his chest. He bit his lip as he watched the silver haired boy fall. His hand was pushing the button for the intercom before the other had time to react. "Stop the treatment! We'll continue tomorrow for the rest."

Bubbles, who had catched the inmate before he had hit the ground, nodded towards the unseen speaker. After placing the bag securely over the silver head, he promptly threw the prone body over his shoulder.

The dark cloaked figures watched the man walk out of the room and the automatic door closed with an ominous thump behind him. The silence stretched for a moment and the green-eyed man pushed the hood off to reveal an abundance of red locks. He moved towards the smaller figure.

"Don't touch me," blue-eyes flared as the boy lashed out before the other could get close.

"Come on XIII, a small pat on the back for reassurance won't kill you."

"Leave me alone, VIII," the other sulked as he pulled his hood down and started for the door. "Do you know what they are making of the boy?"

Number VIII shrugged and flipped a strand of red hair across his shoulder, "It's really none of our concern, is it?"

Number XIII paused with his hand on the doorknob. "I heard _him_ talking about it. They're going to make the boy go after the rebels. Putting one of their own to fight against them." He waited, but number VIII didn't respond so the blond glanced back with a deep frown. "It's not right."

"We don't have the luxury to think about such things. We do what we are told." Green eyes met blue in stern reprimand and blue faltered, a dark shadow passing through the depths before it fell.

"We don't have a heart between us to feel such things," was the echo of a voice he had heard before. XIII left the room to do his duty for the Organization.

It was quiet and peaceful when Riku opened his eyes to the darkness. He lifted his hand to his head and wondered how he had got there or where this was for the matter.

He leaned his head against the cool surface of the wall behind him and signed, feeling lethargy stealing over him. Closing his eyes he tried to summon the strength to think back. He remembered white light and blue and pain. But he wasn't hurt anywhere, he wasn't bleeding, he wasn't sore.

There was something he was forgetting, something important.

"Blue," he mumbled and tasted the word. The world inside his mind exploded into color and he was spiraling down into the vast blue that was so important that he must remember what it was. He simply must.

Riku's eyes snapped back open into the darkness before narrowing into slits.

"I can't forget," his voice was uneven and rough, making him wheeze. "Sora."


	5. Chapter 5

**Writer: finem**

Once Dinnertime was over, the streets of Hollow Bastion were once again flooded with pedestrian traffic. The tension in the air had decreased considerably as people were finally allowed to indulge in some well-deserved free time. The hours between 7 and 11 were open socialization, and for that limited time, the iron fist of the Organization's rule loosened enough to allow the citizens to breathe.

Sora and Kairi made their way through this crowd not needing to feign the smiles on their faces as they traveled across the bridge to the non-human part of the city. The Organization had decided at some point that the two races needed to live separately, but that didn't keep close friendships from building between them.

The two made their way to a small suburb nestled in amongst the madness of the city somehow, and walked up the lawn of Goofy's small, well-kept home. Sora gave a rhythmic knock to the door, and the two heard the sounds of pounding feet and a small scuffle before the door swung open to reveal a young duck in a green tank-top and baseball cap.

"Sora! Kairi!" he cried just before his two brothers ran into him sending all five of them sprawling on the lawn.

"Huey, Dewy, Louie," Sora laughed brushing himself off as he got to his feet. "It's great to see you guys, but don't you live next door?"

"Hey," Louie said, jumping to his feet. "It's not our fault Maximilian's in the john and can't answer his own door."

"Besides," Dewey piped in, "We knew it was you from your knock. Totally safe."

"Not when you get back in here," a voice growled from the door and the group turned to see Goofy's son, Max, glaring daggers at his three friends. "It completely _is_ your fault I was in the john when you're the ones who _locked_ me in there to begin with! And I'm totally not taking the fall for eating all of dad's cookies! Hey Sora. Hey Kairi." Max's demeanor changed completely as he greeted the two humans. "Dad and Donald got caught at Scrooge's place for dinner. They should be back soon."

"Do you mind if we wait here until they get back?" Kairi asked, straightening her skirt.

"Sure," Max smiled, "Come one in. _You_ on the other hand," he glared at the triplets, "can get off my property."

"Oh, c'mon, Maxy!" Huey called as Sora and Kairi made their way inside. "You know we wouldn't hold out on you. We saved you some."

Max continued glaring for a moment longer before stepping back and allowing the three teens in. "I'm only letting you in because you're making more cookies to replace the ones you ate," he told them.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Louie tossed over his shoulder, as he closed the door.

Sora and Kairi chuckled watching the four interact. I was nice to see that the city hadn't sucked the normal out of everything. Despite that fact that their mothers were missing, leaving them with Donald, Goofy and the triplet's great uncle Scrooge to look out for them, they seemed to have adjusted fairly well.

A couple of minutes after Sora and Kairi had settled in to wait on the couch while the teens set to destroying the kitchen, there was the jangle of keys at the door and then Goofy's lanky form appeared in the entry way.

"Boys! We're back!" he called then paused when he saw that the two sitting in the living room were definitely not his sons nor Donald's nephews.

"A-hyuck, Donald look!" He called to the disgruntled duck stomping in behind him. "We've got guests."

"Hey, guys" Sora greeted them, standing. "We need to talk to you about something."

"In private," Kairi added, lowering her voice.

The sounds coming from the kitchen stopped suddenly and the air became heavier. Clearly the boys had heard her anyway. Donald and Goofy tried to keep their charges as distanced from it as possible, but it was no secret that the two friends assisted the Resistance as much as they could. They didn't often get involved in missions that would put themselves or their families at risk, but they served as information hubs and often knew things that no one in the city was supposed to know.

"Let's head to the den," Goofy offered into the sudden silence. "Boys, you go ahead and finish up what you were doing. We'll be back out in a bit."

The kitchen remained silent even as the four rebels made their way to a different room. They could feel the concern radiating from the four boys they were leaving behind.

"What's up?" Donald asked somberly as soon as the door was closed.

"Riku," Sora told them. "He went out to meet a new potential last night and never came home."

"We think he's been captured." Kairi finished. The words hung heavy in the air as the dog and duck shared concerned glances.

"What do you need?" Donald asked without hesitation.

"What we need is to get him out," Sora said, doing his best to contain the freshly awakened terror pounding through his chest. "There's gotta be something that we can do; some way to find out where he is. We don't know anything about the reeducation process. Maybe...maybe they just hold people for a while before they start playing with their memories. Maybe it's not to late to get him back--"

"Sora," Donald interrupted with crossed arms and a tapped foot. "You know that we can't do that. If we try to make a move without orders we could ruin everything."

"What 'everything'?!" Sora snapped. "We don't even know who we're taking orders _from!_ For all we know, it's someone _in_ the Organization just playing with us, making us think we're doing something when really we're just running around in circles!"

"It's not like that and you know it!" Donald shot back angrily. "You're not the only one who's lost someone to the Organization, y'know? What makes you think you're so special--"

_"Because it's Riku!"_ Sora's sudden outburst silenced everything in the room. "It's not just anyone! He's the closest thing to a face this Resistance has! The one who looks out for us; keeps the teams safe! We can't just turn our backs on him! He's too important! He means too much! We can't lose him! _I can't lose him_ on top of everything else!"

"Stop." Kairi's voice seemed to cut through the air, and attention was suddenly focused on her. Her shoulders were shaking and there were tears streaming from her eyes. "Just stop," she said again. "This isn't helping anything. Sora, Donald's right, we've been in this way too long to start doubting now, we can't just start doing whatever we want. And Donald, we're just trying to figure out what to do now. Riku has always been there before. He's always been the one who knew the steps to take when stuff like this happened. Without him..." she trailed off, expressing, with her lack of words, just how lost she and Sora both felt.

"Well, have you checked your messages lately?" Goofy asked into the break in speaking. "Maybe there's something about it there."

Sora looked up at Kairi with startled eyes, and Kairi looked back, equally surprised. It was the most obvious thing for them to do, yet neither had even thought of it.

"Can I use your computer?" Sora asked, already walking over to the desktop in the corner of the room.

"Help, yourself, a-hyuck!" Goofy answered even as Sora was logging on and pulling up his email account. He opened his spam mailbox and noticed that amongst the many junk messages there was one entitled 'Finding your way to dawn'

'Way to dawn.' That was one of Riku's codes. He clicked on the message, which was full of pointless fillers, and hit the reply button. After a moment of thought, he began typing.

Dawn is lost. What is the key to finding the light again?

Sora didn't have many opportunities to use his codes as Riku was the head of their team, but 'key' and 'light' had been assigned to him as words he could use to identify himself. He sent the reply, heart pounding with nerves and anxiety, then turned to look at the others as he waited to see if he would receive a response.

Somehow, their mysterious organizer seemed to always be ready to reply, sometimes even controlling their computers remotely to ensure the message was delivered. How their location was ascertained and how email account and other personal information was known remained a question that the rebels could not answer. It did however give them faith in whoever was in charge of the Resistance. If their faceless leader could know so much about the people of Hollow Bastion, then surely they knew about the Organization as well.

The room remained silent as they all waited. It wasn't long before the account refreshed itself and a new message appeared at the top of the spam list.

'Light weight keys, for your personal use! Item #13546527'

Sora opened the message, which looked like an advertisement for something from an auction site, but he knew that there was more hidden within. Looking at the auction description, he grabbed a pencil and paper and began writing letters from the code given in the item number. It didn't take long.

He sat back, awed, allowing the others in the room to see the text that had been hidden in the message.

'Will you be the new dawn?'

The Resistance was asking Sora to take Riku's place...


	6. Chapter 6

**Writer: beckychan**

Riku's door creaked open. He sighed and resigned himself to letting the bag get forced over his head. He'd just have to think of Sora, remember Sora. The footsteps sounded different today. It wasn't Cobra Bubbles this time. He could tell by the sound of the gait. It was heavier and more easy-going.

Whoever it was was whistling through a gap in their teeth, a cheerful little melody that Riku could almost place. The bag was put over his head by large hands (and was that claws and metal he felt brush his cheeks?) and he was helped to his feet, almost gently.

"Alrigh' then?" a friendly voice said to him.

He shrugged, but didn't speak. The guard shrugged a little as well and led him out. They went a different way this time, a longer way.

"So, this yer first time bein' reeducated?"

Riku didn't deign this with a response. What sort of stupid question was that?! If he could glare at his guard, he would. As it was, he settled for glaring ineffectually at the inside of the hood.

His guard seemed to know what he was thinking, though, because he followed it up with a nervous chuckle and said, "A'right, a'right, just makin' conversation."

He went back to whistling, and the tune was distracting Riku, because he couldn't _quite_ place it, and he didn't know why. It seemed so obvious to him, so recognizable, yet he was stuck for answers. Hopefully, today's session would make him forget he'd heard it so it wouldn't drive him crazy for the next several days.

The walk was longer this time, and his guard greeted everyone he saw cheerfully, interrupting his tune, and going back to it as soon as the salutation was done. Riku couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard the hiss of hydrolics and the clang of padded metal with every other step. Occasionally, a whir caught his attention, and it seemed like it could just be part of the inner workings of Oblivion, but it seemed closer, more... organic than that. Riku was having trouble placing it, and that was almost as infuriating as the whistled song.

Finally, his guard dragged him to a halt.

"And a fine mornin' to you, Miss Sinclair," the guard said, and Riku could hear and feel him bow.

"Can it, Silver. Just fill out the paperwork," a no-nonsense woman's voice replied. It was the same voice he heard from the day before. Guard duty at a different location today?

"Of course, of course!" Silver said cheerfully. Riku heard the sound of pen on paper, as he had the day before, but it seemed he was filling out his own forms, unlike Bubbles, who had let Miss Sinclair do it herself.

"There's been a change of plans," Miss Sinclair informed him. "I'm to reeducate him today. You are to take my place at the desk."

Silver let out an exasperated sigh. "One mistake," he grumbled. "Make one mistake an' it's on yer record for life."

"Intentionally improperly reeducating that Hawkins boy go was more than just a mistake, Silver, and you're lucky the Superior didn't shoot you down where you stood when he found out!"

"A'right, a'right," the man said. "Yer point's made."

Riku heard the chair scrape back, and then a great weight drop into it. Silver was clearly a large man. The sound of high-heeled shoes approached him. He heard the sound of the two scanners, hand and retinal, working and then her voice, "Helga Sinclair," and the door opened.

As Riku was forced into the room by Helga (who was very strong for a woman), Silver ceased his whistling and began to sing instead.

"O say! Can you see  
By the _dawn's early light_..."


	7. Chapter 7

**Writer: Hoshiyuki**

Sora couldn't believe his eyes as he stared at the computer screen. Did this mean that they were giving up on finding Riku? Tears filled his eyes, but he held them back and started typing. At least as _Dawn_ he would have more power then he now held. Maybe he could even meet someone on the inside or _something_. The other's had trailed off somewhere leaving him with his thoughts, it was his decision after all.

Finally he leaned back and twirled in his chair to face the room. The group was standing near the window facing the backyard.

"How is she these days?" he could hear Kairi ask in a hushed tone.

"About the same," Donald's reply was soft and laced with pain. Sora got up and walked towards the group peering outside. He reached the window and saw Daisy sitting near the pond in the middle of the boxlike yard. She had a soft smile twisting her beak, but here eyes had a vacant quality as her hand brushed the still water startling the small fish under the surface.

This was one of the many reasons Donald was so against the organization and with him the rest of his friends and family. It had been nearly five years when Daisy had been taken for walking home too late. The rules had been harsher then and the results of the treatment more obvious. It had been near the start of the organization's cruel rule of the city.

Daisy had been returned a few days after she had disappeared, returned with that same vacant stare and half smile. She hardly knew where she was half the time, she spoke but ignored the answers, the garden was one of the places she was truly happy and Donald let her stay.

"She looks so thin," Kairi commented holding her hand up to the glass, as if her will was enough to make the lady duck well again.

"She eats when we offer it to her, but she often forgets what she's doing and her attention slips. She might act normal one moment, say she'll wash the dishes and then after a moment I walk in to find her standing next to the sink staring outside. She won't hear me when I call to her, won't even acknowledge the fact that I'm there," there was pain in Donald's voice.

The computer behind them gave a sudden 'pling' as a message popped up saying that a new e-mail had been received. As a wave the group looked at Sora who hurried back to the computer.

The title of the message read: "Congratulations!! You have won a new deluxe DAWN SEDAN! Click inside to claim your prize."

With a shuddering breath, Sora opened the message.

Riku was pushed un-ceremonially into the room and he could hear the door shut with an electrical hiss. Now where had he heard that song before? There was something significance to the words that he couldn't quite remember.

Before he could finish the thought, the woman, Helga, pulled the bag over his head catching a few strands of silver in its wake. She looked like a no-nonsense kind of woman and she had dark shades hiding her eyes, just like the first guard that had taken him the day before. Was it only a day? It felt like he'd been here years.

Wait, what guard? Riku tried to focus on the stray thought, but it swam away from his grasp before he could think about it properly.

The light hadn't been turned on yet. Riku blinked, the thought finding its way to his muddled brain.

What light? He glanced up and saw a blue triangle shaped object pointing at him from the ceiling. A wave of panic hit him as he saw Helga pull a switch near the entrance of the reeducation chamber.

A dazzling light fell on him from the ceiling. He tried to cramp his eyes shut against the blinding glare, but against all his senses he couldn't stop watching the white light.

Riku tried to focus on something, the man outside. He was important, he knew something about him, might even be able to help him escape this place with some of his memories.

Why was he so important? He hadn't done anything important in his life.

Sora.

The single thought was painful, but he couldn't recall why. He felt his eyes droop as the light was switched off just as suddenly as it had been turned on.

A clear girl's voice could be heard from the intercom: "Starting the false memory simulator."

Riku watched the opposite wall, with a huge dark piece of glass, seeing a haggard looking silver haired youth and he felt a crooked smile form on his dried lips. The youth in the glass smirked back at him just before the light started again. He moved his head.

Why could he move now, when a moment ago the mere thought of it had been agony?

He was alone in the chamber.

When had that woman left? What was her name? He felt that he should know her from somewhere.

Oh yes, she was one of the Organization's soldiers. Of course she was, how could he have forgotten?

Suddenly the light was hurting again. He felt lightheaded and before he could stop he glanced up and saw the youth in the mirror falling. Everything went dark


End file.
